Hard Cast bullets

[gmww]

I'm hoping wit the sizer, it will be scraping the fouling all the way down. It did pretty well with the hard cast .45 pistol bullets.

 

[PitchyPine]

I mix a little Linotype with wheel weights for hardness in my 45-70.
Been using the 405 grain round nose bullet with this mixture for over 20 years on white tails. Have never had one go over 30 yards most fall right over.
The round nose bullet does make a hole that will close up behind it like a round ball unless ya hit bone then it will tear things up good.
This year i bought the Lee 405 flat nose mold and will try it for deer this season.
I`ve never hunted real big game such as elk but if i did i`d want the bullet to be fairly hard for good penetration. Bullet placement is the key ingredient with any bullet

 

[Greenmtnboy]

I pre-size them at home actually and not as I load. I hope that makes sense. The sizer is actually from the original barrel I'm loading too. So the grooves and lands match up. I keep the pre-sized bullets in a speed loader only to protect them. I do have to line them up when loading. It only take a split second. I can do it by feel. I place the bullet on the crown and turn slightly with some downward pressure. When they line up the bullet slips in quite easily. After a while it becomes second nature. :grin:

Sweet,
This is a great idea.
:thumbsup:

 

[gmww]

I was my way of getting around the shortage of pure lead. Now I can use the hard stuff for this gun.

 

[brassell31]

Just my experience here, nothing empirical. Way back when I first started muzzleloading, I was casting .54 440 gr. Maxiballs with wheel weights. They were a little hard to load as they were being engraved on the front band as they were pushed down the barrel, but after the first 6" or so, they went easy. I don't know if they were following the rifling at this point or if the front band was stripped off, but they were very accurate in my TC Renegade. Anyway, out of 6 elk killed with them (over 110 grs. of Pyrodex RS), none of the bullets fragmented, and only one exited. Of the five recovered, all showed some expansion, and were against the far hide. This is from ranges of 15 yds. to about 100 yds, all double lung shots behind the shoulder, except for the 100 yard shot, which broke both shoulders, and strangely enough, the only one that exited.I suppose that particular bullet could of come from a harder batch of wheel weight lead, as I was getting them from all different sources.

 

[jmforge]

Okay, here is the burning question. Comapnies like Garrett have carved out a very nice niche making SUPER hard cast big meplate bullets in .44 magnum and 45-70. These things are beyond anything that most of us would ever cast because the use silver as an alloying element to get the bullets hard as woodpecker lips. The other thing is that they allegedly penetrate like crazy like a steel jacketed solid and hold together. So why is it the conventional wisdom amongst ML guys that super hard cast is bad and extreme penetration is worse? I would think that super hard cast bullets would be a PITA to load from the muzzle end and that would be the only problem. Engraving the rifling is not an issue with a breechloader. It's gonna get done.

 

[BrownBear]

You got it. Hard cast is fine for butt feeders, but a PITA when going the other way.

I've uses a whole bunch of them in revolvers and can verify the claims. It's a tradeoff though, between elephant-size penetration of the hard cast and the effects of some expansion for more tissue damage along a shorter wound channel.

Same old argument that's never been settled and never will be.

But in my experience with both the hard cast penetrators in handguns and pure lead round balls or conicals in MLs, I'll take the pure lead and some degree of expansion. That's cuzz I just don't need all that penetration for broadside lung shots, and that's all I'm willing to take. The hardcast results in a much slower kill. Good thing I get through and through penetration for more blood trail with hard cast, because there's almost always a tracking job.

If I'm worried about penetration for broadside lung shots on bigger game, I just go to a bigger ball or heavier all-lead conical. Just a choice thing, but I don't need the hassle of hardcast to get the job done with a muzzleloader.

 

[jmforge]

Can overexpansion be a problem with hollow point pure lead conicals in certain situations like is supposedly can be on "non premium" modern bullets? From what I read, the big selling point of ammo like Garrett is that it will give you the same big wound channel as an expanding bullet in a typical hunting caliber without breaking apart and will penetrate better because of bullet design and weight. I know that some folks talk about the hydrostatic shock effect of modern rounds. but my brother uses the 300+gr super hard cast Federal .44 magnums in his Smith 629 and those things are super duper hog slayers even though the velocities involved are more in line with what you would get with the typical ML'er as opposed to something like a .454 Casull or a +P Garrett 45-70.

 

[BrownBear]

I suspect "hydraulic shock" is the acai berry of the shooting world. Acai berry will cure anything you got and polish your car while it's at it. Hydraulic shock aint a bad car polish either.

Trouble is, it's just not going to happen at ML or revolver velocities. The two biggest things I've seen from big meplats and hard cast are more tissue tearing or cutting compared to round, and less tendency to veer or deflect off course while passing through an animal, provided they're on a longer bullet with higher ballistic coefficient.

"Over-expansion" was solved in cartridge guns with the Nosler Partition back in the 1950's. And even then I think it was a bit of an acai berry sales job. I love Joyce Hornady's response when someone confronted him about over-expansion in his bullets. "How do you know?" he asked the complainer. "Cuzz I got the bullet right here in my hand and it's expanded too big!" responded the complainer. "Oh," sezz Joyce. "So it killed the animal and you got the bullet back."

 

[Hamourkiller]

You could get your mold modified with a cramer conversion. Have the hollow point pins and flat nosed pins. Then cast as needed, 20-1 with the hollow point and harder with the flat points. Then your gun-bullet would be an even more versatile system than it is now.
http://www.hollowpointmold.com/default.htm

I hope the idea helps.

The guys at Cast Boolits have helped me under stand a lot about casting and lead hardness manipulation.
http://castboolits.gunloads.com/

 

[gmww]

Well I forgot I had a Lee .457" 405 grns mold. I tested some hard cast conicals from this mold using my sizer. Went to the range today and fired a bunch. I didn't experiment with different charges. I just filled up my antler horn (80 grns) with Pyrodex RS and shot at 50 yards.

I also shot some of those 500 grns bullets with the pointed noses. They were very accurate but I'll stick with these and see about developing a tighter group with a powder charge change.

 

[longcruise]

Looks like five shots a hair under 2 inch. Certainly ok for hunting at ml ranges. Might improve with more powder. I shoot those from my 45-70 at about 1350 fps (have not chronoed the load and it may be faster than that) and the accuracy is quite good. It will bust clay birds at 200 meters 30% using a crappy tang peep that wiggles around a lot. That's out of a 1/20 twist.

The Lee 450 might be a winner too. Maybe that one was in your original line up?

Bigger grease grooves would be nice.

 

[gmww]

When I loaded those up, I smeared Bore butter all around and a dab underneath. I'm going to try some loads with a bore butter button. Then possibly a veg fiber over powder wad and bore butter/button too.

Just casted a few more bullets and sized them. Real B@st@rd to size even with Alox. :cursing:

 

[jtmattison]

Real B@st@rd to size even with Alox. :cursing:

They might size easier lubed with Bore Butter or even Crisco. Alox is pretty sticky.

HD

 

[Idaho Ron]

I am going to be honest, and strait forward with you. I am NOT being mean don't mis read me. To be honest that is a poor group for 50 yards. If that was 100 yards I would say you can tweek it and do better. At 150 yards I would say you got a shooter. Those three that are touching would be a good group at 100 yards.
I have seen sub 1" groups at 50 yards not even be in the same zip code at 100, and I have seen 1" groups at 100 yards not even touch paper at 150.
Again I am not trying to be mean but I think the hard lead is going to cause more troubles than it is worth. I have been down your road I have fired a small fortune worth of powder and bullets doing what you are doing. The only hard lead bullets I got to shoot half way good was the Lyman whitworth bullet. Loading this bullet was tough, but it shot well.
Again I think that you should look into paper patching your bullets with soft lead. Use a felt wad between the powder and bullet. SIze your patched bullets dry with a Lee sizer so your paper stayes dry. Only lube before you shoot them.
I think you will see your groups shape up. Also I didn't get real good groups until I backed the powder off. I am using 80 gr of Pyrodex P, 386 gr Lee 459-405-HB, and a CCI mag cap.
In this picture, I shot two groups. Both were shot at 100 yards. The purpose of this was to show the difference that paper patches make in my rifle. I did clean between groups, but NOT between shots.

I am not going to say that by shooting paper patch you will get sub 1" groups every time, but it helps. I have shot MANY sub 1" groups with this rifle, but I would say that day in and day out it will be sub 2" at 100 yards about any time.
If you have your heart set on shooting HARD lead good luck. :hatsoff: Ron

 

[gmww]

The 500 grns. Lee was touching at 50 yards but those are pointed. So I'm still going to tweak this one to a tighter group. I've been forced to used Pyrodex RS as BP is getting harder and harder to come by. If that fails, I may try the paper patch. But remember this is for a hunt under 100 yards.

BTW I also like pure lead better too but like BP it's getting hard to come by unless I'm willing to spend some $. I got lots of wheel weights so I'm trying to make the best of it.

 

[gmww]

It just occurred to me while posting about my .62 that this barrel has less than 10 rounds through it. I guess I need to see how she does when it breaks in.

BTW, it's a 1:22" twist with a 32" barrel.

 

[Idaho Ron]

If you are willing to pass on shots over 100 yards you might be fine. Like I said before, I have seen one hole groups at 50 turn it to cr@p at 100 yards. By cr@p I am talking over 7" groups. I can't get Black powder here without jumping through hoops. I am happy with Pyrodex P. Ron

 

[paulvallandigham]

Sometimes, shooting at too large a bullseye will open your groups up unnecessarily. Use the smallest " sighter" you can stick on the paper at 50 yards to be your aiming point.

I use a business card, turned 45 degrees(stapled to the target), so that the corner of the card sticks up into the black of the bullseye, and the corner becomes my aiming point. This produces far smaller groups( removing only human error) even off a bench rest, than if I shoot at the target without the sighter.

For men who shoot much more often, and practice a lot, a sighter may not show such a drastic improvement. I know when I practice my shooting a lot, my groups all get much smaller. ( I call it knocking the rust off!) But, If I am trying to find out how well a new gun shoots, or work up a load, and want to know how well a new load shoots compared to others, I USE the sighter.

Just a suggestion. :thumbsup:

 

[gmww]

I've been using that white circle as my point of aim. It's going to be a matter of time to break in the barrel and develop a load. I'm heading to the range to see if I can get on and shoot. Weekends tend to be too crowded.